Accra

Accra

Accra, on the Gulf of Guinea, is the capital and largest city of Ghana. The city partly sits on a cliff 8 to 12 meters high, spreading northward across the rolling Accra Plains. The site of present-day Accra was occupied by several Ga villages ruled from a mother settlement, Ayaso, about 24 km to the north, when the Portuguese first settled on the coast of present-day Ghana in 1482. Three fortified trading posts - Fort James (English), Fort Crevecoeur (Dutch), and Christiansborg Castle (Danish) - were built by Europeans along the coast between 1650 and 1680. During the construction of these European posts, tribal warfare destroyed Ayaso, and its inhabitants, along with those of the other major Ga towns on the Accra plain, migrated to the coast, attracted by the prospect of prosperous trading with the Europeans. This created three coastal villages which became the nucleus of the future Accra. The term Accra itself is an abridgment of the Akan word nkran. It relates to the black ants that are abundant in the area. It came to be used to refer to those living in this part of the Accra Plains. Accra became a thriving commercial center in the following years, and became the capital of the British Gold Coast Colony in 1877, after the Danes and Dutch left in 1850 and 1872, respectively. To improve the city, a municipal council was formed in 1898. By the 1930s, Accra had been systematically laid out. Today, the city is Ghana's administrative, economic and educational center. It contains the headquarters of all major banks and trading companies, insurance agencies, the electricity company, the general post office, and the Accra Central Library.